Grrl Powerhttps://grrlpowercomic.com
A webcomic about superheroines.
Thu, 21 Mar 2019 14:01:42 +0000 en-US
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1 Grrl Power #720 – Beat the press… to the parking lothttps://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-720-beat-the-press-to-the-parking-lot/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-720-beat-the-press-to-the-parking-lot/#commentsThu, 21 Mar 2019 10:00:13 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=4629
Aren’t most news sources these days “The Daily Panicker”? Arianna chose her job, not because it was easy, but because it was hard. She didn’t count on Sydney, whose presence adds a minimum of three standard deviations to… well, pretty[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

Aren’t most news sources these days “The Daily Panicker”?

Arianna chose her job, not because it was easy, but because it was hard. She didn’t count on Sydney, whose presence adds a minimum of three standard deviations to… well, pretty much anything she’s involved in. The amount of spice she likes in food (that’s like, +10 SDs), knowledge of pop-culture trivia, chance of spontaneous distractibility, and of course, ease of doing public relations involving her.

Although for height, she’s actually only like -1.5 standard deviations, weirdly enough. That assumes the average woman in the US is 5′ 4″, which seems short to me. Maybe because most women wear some sort of heel all the time, but they seem taller to me. I would guess 5′ 5″ or 5′ 6″ honestly. This is from the same source that says the average male height is only 5′ 9″, which again, seems short to me. I probably have some sort of observation bias for tall people.

But much like Sydney, I digress.

Arianna’s been playing her deadly game with the press, and after Sydney made huge and repeated splashes with the press, any absence is sure to be noticed.

]]>https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-720-beat-the-press-to-the-parking-lot/feed/125Book recommendation…ish – Three Square Mealshttps://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/4617/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/4617/#commentsTue, 19 Mar 2019 18:09:22 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?p=4617↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>So, while waiting for Amazon to sort it’s shit out with Michael-Scott Earle, and we can finally get some new Star Justice and Tamer books, I’ve continued reading a bunch of other novels, and I came across one I really like. I’ve been kind of sheepish about recommending it because… well, it’s “erotica.” At least that’s the category it’s listed under at Amazon, but quite frankly, calling it erotica is underselling it a bit. There’s a lot of sex in this book. Like, a lot. So if that doesn’t interest you, you’re just not going to enjoy it. You’d be skimming through… quite a bit of text to get to the rest of the story.

Unlike a lot of other harem novels, however, the sex actually factors heavily into the actual plot. Yes, it’s almost like the author came up with a reason for the characters to have a lot of sex, beyond them being horny for the usual reasons, and then wrote a story about it.

If the sex doesn’t turn you off, or, if in fact you don’t mind some sex (or a lot) in your harem books, there’s a shockingly good space opera to be had here. I would actually put it on par with Star Justice, which is something I never thought I’d say, as it’s one of my favorite series of all time. Another thing I like about Three Square Meals is that there’s a lot of it. The story is over 2 million words long and counting. By the time you get through the first three books, the overarching plot is only barely starting to reveal itself. What can I say? I enjoy it when there’s a lot of something I enjoy. In a shorter story, you get to see the characters interact with one group or another, but then that’s usually it. In this longer format, you get to revisit those groups and see the sometimes empire shifting consequences of their interactions with the MCs. Plus, IMO, the story keeps getting stronger as the cast expands and the momentum of the story builds.

Another thing I like about the story is that it does OP right. The main character, (and the women in the harem) get really powerful. (Something I like in my harem novels is when the women are really awesome too, go figure.) The story keeps escalating so that they have significant challenges, but importantly, there are a lot of great scenes where the MCs have awesome moments of OP-ness* and are able to wow their allies, and/or crush their enemies, and see them driven before them, etc. That balance is important IMO, and a lot of books don’t get it right.

Nearly the entirety of the story is available on Literotica. There’s a bit of a delay for the most recent chapters. If you’re unsure about diving in, you can start here, then if you like it, you can support the author at Amazon or his Patreon. The Kindle versions have had an additional editing pass, with some extra scenes thrown in for good measure.

And the author has a Patreon, if you get caught up with all 2 million+ words and can’t wait for the next chapter to come out on Literotica.

*Hur hur, I said penis.

]]>https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/4617/feed/7Grrl Power #719 – Idiomatic, planetary…https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-719-idiomatic-planetary/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-719-idiomatic-planetary/#commentsMon, 18 Mar 2019 10:00:16 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=4620
I think if aliens really did show up, most countries would freak the fuck out, but then the one country who was all “Come on down” and the aliens are like “Thanks, here’s the technology for optical circuitry that’s ten[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

I think if aliens really did show up, most countries would freak the fuck out, but then the one country who was all “Come on down” and the aliens are like “Thanks, here’s the technology for optical circuitry that’s ten orders of magnitude faster than anything else on your world,” all the xenophobic countries would be all “Oh… shit.”

Ah, alien idioms. To watch just about every show and read every book ever, one might get the impression that English is the only language with idiomatic expressions, because aliens are always stumbling over them, no matter how intelligent they’re supposed to be, and no matter how obvious the meaning is from context. Well, except for those “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” aliens who are the cartoonish counter example. Seriously, how did that race invent integrated circuitry or crack warp travel talking like that?

“Jablus and Forbgyte… used silicon to channel electrons into this XOR gate? Guys, can we lay off the metaphors for like, one hour so we can get some work done?”
“Dornius, at noon, knows only hunger.”
“Yes, Phil, I ate your sandwich, because you never label anything.”

God, imagine just trying to order a ham on rye on that world. “No, no, I don’t want yellow mustard, I want the dijon… gah, I mean, Fligbus, his senses filled with spice! No! Not the red pepper flakes! Who puts red pepper flakes on a ham sandwich!?”

It always bugged me when Spock or Data’s IQ would suddenly drop to 70 when someone said something like “Hit the sack” “Beat around the bush” and they’re all, “Why would you attack the area around foliage?” Based on context, those things should be pretty easy to figure out. If you’re dealing with a language that replaces every third word with “smurf” or “squanch” then it can get a little more challenging, but those aren’t really idioms.

Aren’t all news excerpts in movies/TV/comics/etc really just exposition vehicles? I think they’re better than two informed characters saying to each other “As you know…” then going on to explain something they both know for the audience’s benefit, and both options beat the hell out of a boring preamble. At least Star Wars had John William’s music blaring overtop of it.

]]>https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-719-idiomatic-planetary/feed/412Grrl Power #718 – Mundane majestyhttps://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-718-mundane-majesty/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-718-mundane-majesty/#commentsThu, 14 Mar 2019 10:00:46 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=4614
Well this hopefully answers the question from the previous page as to who was already here. Or whom was already here. (Honestly, why do we even have the word who?) I guess to be fair to the Alari, there are[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

Well this hopefully answers the question from the previous page as to who was already here. Or whom was already here. (Honestly, why do we even have the word who?)

I guess to be fair to the Alari, there are probably places in the world where you could land a huge spaceship without anyone noticing. Assuming you could beat electronic surveillance and negotiate your way through all the crap orbiting the planet. Granted, the quantity and quality of cameras in the world would make it difficult, but there are plenty of places sparsely populated enough to get away with it. At least initially. A satellite would probably eventually spot anything of sufficient size, but maybe anything from a Firefly to Defiant sized ship could evade detection for a few days even if it was sitting right out in the open. Probably in Antarctica or some BFE part of Africa, or some island in the middle of the ocean probably, but it could still be done.

An Alari colony ship is not the size of Firefly. It’s just shy of a kilometer long and many decks deep. Chances are, someone noticed it landing.

]]>https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-718-mundane-majesty/feed/342Grrl Power #717 – The long foot of the lawhttps://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-717-the-long-foot-of-the-law/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-717-the-long-foot-of-the-law/#commentsMon, 11 Mar 2019 10:00:11 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=4609
Phew! Been a while since I drew Max. Luckily I still remember how. When I get to the rest of the team it’s a fair bet I may have to refer to old pages to remember some eye colors here[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

Phew! Been a while since I drew Max. Luckily I still remember how. When I get to the rest of the team it’s a fair bet I may have to refer to old pages to remember some eye colors here and there. I assume Arianna has blue eyes, but it’s probably best if I check.

As to whatever situation this is, I’m not entirely sure what the deal is, like why Max is soloing this guy. Probably because she’s the fastest mover and she can generally handle stuff without backup, but that’s a combination for falling into a trap, so she tries not to go in without any backup if she can help it. Without Sydney to handle rapid ferrying, the next fastest mode of transport available to them is the Osprey. That’s a lot faster than loading everyone into a convoy of black SUV’s, but still much slower than Max or Sydney’s airspeed. Especially with Sydney’s recent upgrade.

]]>https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-717-the-long-foot-of-the-law/feed/358Grrl Power #716 – Emboldened Sydney is boldhttps://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-716-emboldened-sydney-is-bold/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-716-emboldened-sydney-is-bold/#commentsThu, 07 Mar 2019 11:00:29 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=4602
One last trip to the medbay before getting home. Hopefully. This is Syndey we’re talking about here. She really did get stabbed in the ear. Not like, the eardrum, just the “root of the helix” or “forward helix” which is[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

One last trip to the medbay before getting home. Hopefully. This is Syndey we’re talking about here.

She really did get stabbed in the ear. Not like, the eardrum, just the “root of the helix” or “forward helix” which is the little flap on the inside loop above the ear canal. That’s not a very good description. Just look at the first panel. Some people get their ears pierced there. Sydney doesn’t have her ears pierced, so I guess she didn’t feel like using Altus’s horn stab as a starter hole.

Anyway, yeah, Sydney’s adventure in space has emboldened her. We’ll have to wait and see if this is a temporary state of affairs, like people going a little crazy on vacation, or if her self confidence has permanently leveled up.

]]>https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-716-emboldened-sydney-is-bold/feed/217Grrl Power #715 – Wormhole 101https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-715-wormhole-101/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-715-wormhole-101/#commentsMon, 04 Mar 2019 11:00:12 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=4595
So Sydney now has a passport to the galaxy. Sort of. She can’t really go zipping off to just anywhere… Well, she can, she just kind of has no idea where she’s going at the moment, unless she has a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

So Sydney now has a passport to the galaxy. Sort of. She can’t really go zipping off to just anywhere… Well, she can, she just kind of has no idea where she’s going at the moment, unless she has a pathfinder. Fortunately, the orb’s “history tab” seems to remember some of the locations it’s been to, so she can probably explore and always have Earth marked as a recent travel location.

Unless that so called history tab is actually a bookmarks tab, in which case, Earth won’t appear on it unless she can figure out how to add it.

To Sydney’s point about the Nth leaving out useful features from the orbs, I think a lot of super advanced alien tech would be that way, even if it wasn’t god tier tech. If you were smart enough to do 11th dimensional math in your head, and you were the only person using the gadgets you created, it’s likely that your user interface would be an absolute nightmare to anyone but you. Quite frankly, it’s amazing the orbs are as user friendly as they are. Imagine if before firing the PPO, Sydney had to calculate the power used, the frequency of the wavelength, whether or not it was pure EM radiation or a particle beam what sort of particles to use, density, interval, aperture, distance to target, half-life of particle decay, etc, etc.

Obviously the orb would be less useful as a weapon if it took 5 minutes of fidgeting with it to get it to do anything, which is probably why there’s just a (mental) button to push to get it to work. But underneath the one button interface is probably a host of options that Sydney would never be able to muddle her way through, and if she did ever start playing with the settings, the PPO might wind up firing area effect gamma burst death fields instead of the neato cutting beam.

I’ve updated the vote incentive, but before you click on it, let me say something about it as it’s not my usual fare. I painted over a picture of a fitness gal helpfully showing her physique. The point of the picture wasn’t to impress with my knowledge of anatomy, I was using it to practice drawing shiny Maxima, so I thought I’d save some time and work from an existing picture. Turns out that didn’t actually save me a whole bunch of time, as I wound up repainting almost every part of the woman cause it had that jpeggy dithering all over it and it bugged me and I’m OCD that way.

So, after all that, I’m not too pleased with the results for a few reasons. One, it took forever, which means it’s impractical to do in the comic. Two, honestly it doesn’t look as good as I’d like. Of course, I was comparing myself to paintings like Alex Ross’s pictures of Silver Surfer and Iron Man, and that’s admittedly a high bar. My piece isn’t bad, but it could be a lot better. Whether or not it could be better and be done at a reasonable speed is another question. Three, there’s another problem with making Max shiny in the manner that I did, is that it relies heavily on sort of… subdividing Max by muscle groups and using those edges to cordon off the edges of the reflections. While that’s more or less how it works if you look at a polished chrome or gold statue, it makes make Max look like she’s cut to the bone. She is, like all supers, in very good shape, but she’s not 0% body fat, and I don’t want to draw her looking like that. She has some feminine softness to her, perhaps unless she’s really flexing and making her muscles pop, but the point is that this method of making her look shiny isn’t what I want it to ultimately look like.

But I learned a bit from doing it, plus now we have a kind of cheaty picture of Max to look at, so it’s all good.

]]>https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-715-wormhole-101/feed/271Grrl Power #714 – Such navigation. So wow.https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-714-such-navigation-so-wow/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-714-such-navigation-so-wow/#commentsThu, 28 Feb 2019 11:00:46 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=4591
Sydney’s about to find out if she’s smorgtose intolerant. Even if she is, she might not know why she starts having ear farts. Looks like Sydney is about to get some honest to god instruction on using the orbs. Or[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

Sydney’s about to find out if she’s smorgtose intolerant. Even if she is, she might not know why she starts having ear farts.

Looks like Sydney is about to get some honest to god instruction on using the orbs. Or at least that one function of the one orb anyway. Also, apparently being stabbed in the ear is suppressing her blush response at the moment. Normally being sandwiched in between two smexy alien boys would make her go fuchsia. But she also might be getting used to being around them, which inoculates her against her own responses somewhat.

Page is still coming along. Still need to fix up the navigation and tag all 700+ comics with the list of characters appearing in them, then figure out how to use the new cast page stuff. Well, it’ll get done eventually.

]]>https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-714-such-navigation-so-wow/feed/315Grrl Power #713 – Bloopberry or malted flerg?https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-713-bloopberry-or-malted-flerg/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-713-bloopberry-or-malted-flerg/#commentsMon, 25 Feb 2019 11:00:28 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=4557
So first off, yes the page is screwy. If you’re on the home page and you can’t see a comic, just click on the title above (Grrl Power #713 etc.) and you should be able to see it. I had[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

So first off, yes the page is screwy. If you’re on the home page and you can’t see a comic, just click on the title above (Grrl Power #713 etc.) and you should be able to see it. I had some back end work done including moving everything to an updated theme, and I don’t have all the CSS back in place yet. I should have the page back to looking cromulent by the end of the week hopefully. On the plus side, future proofing! Also I should be able to make non-comic posts and edit previously posted stuff, which I haven’t been able to do for a few weeks now. I’ll have to go back and put in all those direct links to the patreon comic for the ones I missed. Also, I need to make Who’s Who badges for the rest of Cora’s crew, but I want to get the page settled before I mess with that stuff.

This is kind of a transitional page, mostly just covering the Grakz aftermath and then moving them to a weirdly spartan kitchen. If you follow me on twitter, you’ve probably seen me complain about various stuff I don’t like drawing – perspective correct backgrounds is a big one, but honestly one of the most difficult and tedious things to draw is stuff like a set table. Silverware, plates, cups, centerpiece stuff like? Man that takes a surprising amount of time to draw correctly. I could just say that Altus keeps his kitchen so tidy you could perform surgery in it but that’d still be a bit of a cop out. I just sort of ran out of time to come up with alien kitchen gadgets and I was having too much fun drawing Altus’s obliques.

So speaking of alien milkshakes… if a race has access to sugar and dairy, or a dairy like substance at least, it’s a fair bet they’d have come up with something like ice cream. Personally I’m blown away by bread. That doesn’t happen accidentally. You have to take this grass stuff, which I would only think people would consider food once they saw animals eating it, then pluck these little grains out of it by hand, then grind it up, mix in water and cook. Forget all the baking soda and yeast and eggs and whatever else, the first piece of ‘bread’ was probably like a cracker where someone got some wheat grains wet and it sat on a hot rock and they ate it anyway. The evolution from that to shit like croissants makes total sense to me, but the very first caveman who invented bread had to have done it by accident.

BUT I DIGRESS. The point is, space ice cream is totally realistic because people like experimenting with food. Whether or not there’s such a thing as space vanilla is another matter. Sydney has to choose if her milkshake will be blin flavored, cahola, bloopberry, shabazoz, or flerg. Oh, what does blin taste like you ask? Well, it’s like flibbib, but more shoozy, and with a hint of glulb. Yeah. The Universal Translator is of no help here, because there’s no equivalent flavors on Earth.

]]>https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-713-bloopberry-or-malted-flerg/feed/277Grrl Power #712 – Turn on your fart light…https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-712-turn-on-your-fart-light/
https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-712-turn-on-your-fart-light/#commentsThu, 21 Feb 2019 11:00:00 +0000https://grrlpowercomic.com/?p=3092
Let’s all politely ignore that “MassFab” is written in English, hmm? I could have written it in one of those alien 1 for 1 swap languages like the Futureama font or Stargate SG-1 Ancient or Zentradi or… actually there’s a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

Let’s all politely ignore that “MassFab” is written in English, hmm? I could have written it in one of those alien 1 for 1 swap languages like the Futureama font or Stargate SG-1 Ancient or Zentradi or… actually there’s a lot of them. That was my tactic for most of the signs on Fracture Station. But everything happening on Cora’s ship is running through universal translators anyway, so there’s no need to complicate things with some squiggly-do language.

Let’s all also ignore how stark the guest quarters must be. For some reason I decided to make the wall in her room look like a cold iron dungeon wall. I know Cora said she was upgrading the ship bit by bit, but the interior design of the thing is still super slapdash at the moment. Maybe there’s “exposed brick” i.e. unfinished walls here and there since Cora is the sort of person who cares more about function than form. Once the new relays are in, she doesn’t particularly care about the plasteel finish. She actually prefers the easier access for maintenance, but exposed conduit does create security problems in case they get boarded, so she’ll eventually have all that stuff covered up.

Fun fact, Grakz usually comes with a coupon for a free rectal skin graft. Cora distracted Sydney away from the booth before she got her voucher.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.